As a non English spoken person,who surely has more difficulty to understand lyrics many times,I can only agree with you,and for us this is a good example of differences,especially when they come through a cable🙂
Let me address this one first with an example.
AFAIR Scott Wurcer brought up the idea of the guy who claims to be able to calculate the 5th root of a 21 digit number (remember just an example) with mental math. He expressed that this guy would have no problems to proof and why shouldn´t it be that easy with listening.
What will happen with the math guy? You just have to ensure that he is not using any electronic help and that he got no transmitted solution, then gave him a 21 digit number and let him work. If he calculates the right solution you had the proof, because it is (nearly) impossible to get the right answer by guessing.
Now for the listeners claim; there is a guy who claims to hear a difference after swapping one interconnect for the other.
You´ll ask him to prove it; the guy is going to swap his cables and you´ll tell him no way!
Then you´ll let him leave the room to have a third guy swap the cables, to came back and listen and to answer the question whether it sounds the same or not.
And of course you´ll tell him that he has to do it at least for 12 times, and that he might 4 or 5 times in a row (just an example) in a situation where nothing has changed.
Don´t you see the difference? The math guy gives proof in exactly the same way he is doing otherwise; just take a number and calculates.
The listener has to do something totally different compared to the situation where the claim was established.
(Of course both could feel to be under pressure due to be in a test)
Will you really insist that the only difference for the listener is that he can´t "peek" anymore?
Wishes
No, as i know you a bit, i wouldn´t think so. 🙂
But you argued that only an ABX would be accepted by professionals and that isn´t necessarily so as other test protocols (like the mentioned) were accepted as well.
Wishes
I'd suggest you reread what TG claimed in his experiment. He did indeed leave the room while the switching was going on. He did NOT randomize order, nor did he control for non-auditory cuing. He also did not have an observer. That's the differences that will be implemented.
Personally, I'd rather do ABX with a switchbox if I were the test subject. The idea that, after the signal has passed through N contacts between microphone and loudspeaker, it will be irretrievably corrupted by the N + 1st, seems like excuse-making and post facto rationalization, but if that's the excuse, then switching needs to be done out of sight.
Personally, I'd rather do ABX with a switchbox if I were the test subject. The idea that, after the signal has passed through N contacts between microphone and loudspeaker, it will be irretrievably corrupted by the N + 1st, seems like excuse-making and post facto rationalization, but if that's the excuse, then switching needs to be done out of sight.
To place this in a slightly different context there is the issue of savantism and “anyone can learn to”. It is frequently claimed that anyone, if they cared, could learn to hear these differences. Mathematical savants are known to exist and their abilities are generally accepted. It would be hard to convince me that I could learn to extract roots with no help. There are BTW some tricks taught in Vedic math to do some seemingly impossible computations in your head but I don’t think that applies here.
There are enough stories as anecdotal as they might be where folks dedicated to discerning small effects admitted that in some cases short term listening failed to detect these differences. I have enough evidence to satisfy me that these things are below my radar. I remain mainly offended by the nonsense physics and outright fraud.
I see, you didn´t mean "EXACTLY" you meant "for a lesser part" instead, but i concede of course that "EXACTLY" sounds much more impressive. 🙂
Leaving aside that a switch box isn´t naturally bounded to the ABX protocol (it could use a random allocation to "A" and "B" instead an allow a true paired preference test).
Without heaving done some measurements in the specific system (at the place) used for the test wrt to RFI issues and ground loop currents i´s surely would not add an additional component for the test, that wasn´t present before.
Wishes
It is not a matter of short term vs. long term, but more of confounders presented by test protocols and the degree of training (you could ask for example jj about that as he has a lot more experience what training could do for listeners).
I don´t know if everybody could learn to hear that; normally for all human abilities exists a certain distribution and why should the hearing sense be an exception.
But people differ in their thinking about importance; i have quite often noticed that listeners do hear a certain effect but rated it as totally unimportant for their normal listening habits.
But our discussions are more related to the question if listening under blind test conditions reflects EXACTLY (hey i like that one too 🙂 ) the situation of the "normal listening" except for the "peeking" .
Of course it does not and that is really pretty basic stuff if one only would try to read something about perception test theory.
It is really beyond my understanding that one argues with the huge impact of every thinkable bias mechanism (and the inability to control that) but otoh is able to deny the impact of a (quit strange) test protocol. And even does so although the (otherwise beloved) strong evidence exists - backed up for example by articles of Nousaine - that EXACTLY the proposed test method will present a big confounder.
Wishes
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Your objection, once we were past the notion of familiarity with the equipment, was the leaving the room when switching was done. That's what I'm responding to. As I said, I'm firmly convinced that the long-term stuff actually reduces sensitivity and would MUCH rather do rapid switching if it were me in the listener's seat, but that doesn't seem to be the opinion of the Faith-Based. So... since they believe that rapid switching is a Bad Thing, that's not what's done here. TG agrees that what he hears will still be audible under my protocol, so frankly, your objections seem to be more pro forma than real.
Again, if you read Nousaine's articles, the test subjects AGREED IN ADVANCE OF BLINDING that they could hear the differences. With the switchbox in place. And even the True Believer test subjects admitted afterward that they were mistaken.
To this day, you still haven't put forth a detailed protocol of how you would test someone like TG's claim. When pressed, you gave some vague handwaving. Here's your chance to shine.
Hi Jakob,
While I concede that many of your points and requirements are sensible, I cannot help but wonder why such rigor is NEVER even hinted at when some arbitrary bloke notes that his totally uncontrolled and sighted test made him hear differences between cables.
best wishes,
jd
Mhm, afair i gave SY the hint, that he was wrong with the number of correct answers needed for the SL he proposed. Maybe that could make a positive contribution?
Let´s see; i gave the advice to modify his test protocol as there exists strong evidence that EXACTLY the "detection of sameness problem" will present a confounder, backed up by afair an article of Nousaine in JAES (not that it needs this article; just look at the data of every documented dbts following that protocol route). Does that count?
I also recommended to use a paired preference test protocol instead as that reflects much better the normal procedure after which a cable is choosen.
AFAIR i answered your questions on positive controls at least two times and gave naturally of course a list of things that could serve as a positive control.
So you may guess, but i´d recommend to stop guessing and to start reading about "confirmation bias"; it seems that your perception of reality is a bit affected by this sort of bias. 🙂
Wishes
Can you point to any examples of the "detection of sameness problem" confounding variable. Is this similar to Apophenia where with random binary the person fails to see repetition as randomness? For instance if there are only 2 cables and you were to flip a coin it's very possible to get the same cable many times in a row - most humans see this as not being random even though it actually is.
I should have closed this thread.
Why? I´d say it is the most civilized discussion on cable blind tests i can remember. 🙂
Wishes
I totally agree!!
Sure, there is a little nastiness slipping through. But I'm learning all sorts of stuff about test protocols and various things I've never heard of before.
I think its great.
I think it's important also because we tend to mix up actual meanings for subjective ones. We tend to think that alternating patterns are "random" and that repetitious ones are not when actually both can be random and be patterns depending on how they were chosen.
Apparently, not 🙂
I'm sure SY would be happy to have you as a co-author for a JAES paper that would be eventually considered as a classic in subjective testing.
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